In MET theory, should you not just substitute the Earth against which you are pushing in your example above, with all the mass in the universe? Then it removes the constraint of having to work harder because you are moving faster in relation to the mass you are pushing against. It also removes the issue of which direction you are travelling in, because there is mass in all directions, if you look far enough.

The problem is constant acceleration. That breaks conservation and physics in general, usually a good sign that the theory is wrong. Why should using the entire mass of the observable universe work differently than using the mass of the Earth? Mach Effect drives would still be an amazing breakthrough even if they didn't provide constant acceleration and operated like any other propulsion system.

I was thinking because the speed relative to the Earth will change, but how do you determine whether the speed relative to the entire Universe is changing?

Well if you are accelerating then your speed relative to everything not accelerating with you is changing. So unless the entire universe is accelerating with you...

Most of the universe is moving at a really high velocity with respect to you. For example our movement through the CMB is pretty high. About 370 k/s. That means you would need gigawatts to get nanogravities. Either that or you could pick a direction that would deliver gigawatts of free energy.

According to my calculations, the Doppler effect applied to gravinertial radiation in an expanding universe makes the effective, or interaction-weighted, mean velocity of the matter within the cosmic horizon linear with the velocity of a Mach effect device, at least at low peculiar velocities (and my math is Newtonian and thus probably wrong at relativistic velocities, even if there's any validity to it in the first place).

Obviously, if this effective mean velocity were always equal to the velocity of the device, you'd have conservation of energy without the Lorentz-invariant Mach effect equation having to be wrong.

Unfortunately, due to other factors I lack the time required to delve into the physics and actually establish what would happen in a fully relativistic framework using Hoyle-Narlikar theory (or at least GR) and accounting for any cosmic weirdness an engineer wouldn't automatically think of. I was hoping Dr. Rodal had done that.

The device is switched on and accelerates a ship from 0 to 10,000km/h. Then it is switched off. The ship is now traveling at 10,000km/h relative to its starting position. But the device cannot "remember" this.

When it is switched on again, it will not require more input energy to accelerate from 10,000km/h to 20,000km/h than it required to accelerate to 10,000km/h in the first place.

Hence, it does indeed operate as a local energy generator.

This is a common mistake. Take a conventional BFR (Big F… Rocket). Let's accelerate this spaceship to a decent fraction of the speed of light. The more it approaches the speed of light, the more difficult it is for the ship to accelerate, as the mass of the spaceship increases more than the mass lost as exhaust propellant. Now switch the motor off. You can't say "the ship cannot remember its velocity, so just switch the motor on again to accelerate without the previous relativistic drag." Again, this has to do with the inertial reference frame the ship departed from.

Yes this is true but it is important to remember that there is nothing special about the rocket's frame of reference. Fort example if they were to drop a marker satellite out the door they would find that they could add velocity relative to the marker as easily as ever. It is only from the Earth frame that they seem unable to accelerate. From the rocket's frame it is the Earth that seems trapped in glue. It is the Earth that has relativistic mass.

In Galilean relativity all frames are equally valid. Special relativity extends this equality to a case where the speed of light is constant for all observers. In short you cannot tell how fast you are moving by how hard it is to accelerate. Motion is still only relative and does not exist as an absolute.

How fast would you say the frame of light is near an event horizion? Just a little further and the frame of reference is moving so fast that light can not escape. Further away from a source at a set frequency, light moves in opposite directions defining a set frame of reference but detecting two identical sources on each side, while suspended above a gravity well, would lead to a change in the frame of reference for each source.

Since the rate of clocks and the gravitational potential have the same derivative, they are the same up to a constant. ... The changing rates of clocks allowed Einstein to conclude that light waves change frequency as they move, and the frequency/energy relationship for photons allowed him to see that this was best interpreted as the effect of the gravitational field on the mass–energy of the photon. ...

locally the speed of light may appear to be constant but at the expense of change in wavelength. Consider that in the case of light instead of a loss in local velocity it is perceived a loss in wavelength. A loss in wavelength is a loss in energy/(energetic mass) and a loss in energy for a particle with rest mass, velocity is lost. For an all seeing fame if space is moving in a direction, the velocity of light may appear to be slower in one direction as opposed to the other, as opposed to a local observer moving would instead perceive changes in wavelength at constant velocity c.

Let us consider the frame dragging effect. For a rotating black hole that pulls space time around it in a vortex the speed of light one way around the black hole is faster than the other.

Rotational frame-dragging (the Lense–Thirring effect) appears in the general principle of relativity and similar theories in the vicinity of rotating massive objects. Under the Lense–Thirring effect, the frame of reference in which a clock ticks the fastest is one which is revolving around the object as viewed by a distant observer. This also means that light traveling in the direction of rotation of the object will move past the massive object faster than light moving against the rotation, as seen by a distant observer.

if there is any acceleration going on it should be with respect to the local frame of light.

Sorry dusty I have no idea what point you are trying to make. You appear to say some things about general relativity mixed with some word salad. Since I was talking about special relativity in a flat space it seems at best to be a change of subject.

I can't make sense of "how fast is the frame of light". But if you are asking what the speed of light is near a black hole the answer is complicated. Locally the speed of light is always the same. Measuring the speed of light at a distance can give different values because of the warped coordinate system. Also because of this warped coordinate system you can't have a globally valid inertial frame at all.

But over a sufficiently short distance in a sufficiently flat space general relativity reduces to special relativity. Since there are no black holes around I think we can ignore general relativity for the moment.

My last sentence sums it up. The rest is elaboration about various points that support that last statement.

Just to clarify, I do believe that the MET will result in greater local energy gain than the electrical power input into the device. Consider the following example, used many times before in this discussion.

The device is switched on and accelerates a ship from 0 to 10,000km/h. Then it is switched off. The ship is now traveling at 10,000km/h relative to its starting position. But the device cannot "remember" this.

When it is switched on again, it will not require more input energy to accelerate from 10,000km/h to 20,000km/h than it required to accelerate to 10,000km/h in the first place.

Hence, it does indeed operate as a local energy generator.

Yes exactly. There simply isn't any way around it. You could use the drive to move asteroids and then use the energy to melt down the asteroids to extract the metals needed for massive structures.

But you also have to believe a simple tabletop device is a method for hacking the universe to draining an infinite amount of power from the universe for our use. The experimental evidence is so close to noise that God would need glasses. And the theory for it is... lets just say "inconsistent" so I don't get nasty messages.

So... good luck with that.

" The experimental evidence is so close to noise that God would need glasses. And the theory for it is... lets just say "inconsistent" so I don't get nasty messages. "

The theory behind the MET follows directly from the same observations by Mach which prompted Einstein to develop SR and GR.

Just to clarify, I do believe that the MET will result in greater local energy gain than the electrical power input into the device. Consider the following example, used many times before in this discussion.

The device is switched on and accelerates a ship from 0 to 10,000km/h. Then it is switched off. The ship is now traveling at 10,000km/h relative to its starting position. But the device cannot "remember" this.

When it is switched on again, it will not require more input energy to accelerate from 10,000km/h to 20,000km/h than it required to accelerate to 10,000km/h in the first place.

Hence, it does indeed operate as a local energy generator.

Yes exactly. There simply isn't any way around it. You could use the drive to move asteroids and then use the energy to melt down the asteroids to extract the metals needed for massive structures.

But you also have to believe a simple tabletop device is a method for hacking the universe to draining an infinite amount of power from the universe for our use. The experimental evidence is so close to noise that God would need glasses. And the theory for it is... lets just say "inconsistent" so I don't get nasty messages.

So... good luck with that.

" The experimental evidence is so close to noise that God would need glasses. And the theory for it is... lets just say "inconsistent" so I don't get nasty messages. "

The theory behind the MET follows directly from the same observations by Mach which prompted Einstein to develop SR and GR.

The experimental evidence is significant to 6 sigma.

Meh, you should be careful idolizing Mach. He seems to have been as much a philosopher as a scientist. That may be why Mach's principle was never a quantitative testable idea. It was not driven by experimental science so much as the demands of his philosophy. The same philosophy caused him to deny the existence of atoms. So...

It's kinda ironic that Einstein's work on Brownian motion pretty much sealed the deal for the existence of atoms. And Mach apparently totally rejected Einstein's theory of relativity.

As for the six sigma thing - it kinda misses the point. Nobody is claiming that they got positive results due to a confluence of random errors. Rather it is the small size of the results with the noisy environment that make it difficult to eliminate systemic errors. Statistical significance calculations cannot account for unknown systemic errors.

Pons and Fleischmann initially reported excess heat 20% higher than could be accounted for by any chemical reaction. Eventually they claimed to be able to generate one kilowatt per cubic centimeter of palladium for 50 days straight. What is the statistical significance of that? 2000 sigma? That was almost 30 years ago.

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard Feynman

Marc G. Millis has just published an article on "inertial frames and breakthrough propulsion physics" in Acta Astronautica.

This is an excellent piece of work, with a wealth of reference material at the end. His conjecture that there are "different" inertial frames of reference is not that hypothetical. In QED, the vacuum is described by a spectral energy density, Rho(w). "..any spectral energy density proportional to w3..." will result in the EM vacuum field, unable to exert any force on an atom in the vacuum. There are an infinite number of Rho(w) densities that fulfill this requirement and leave the vacuum Lorentz invariant.

What is not well understood is that Lorentz transformations are inapplicable, when the two inertial reference frames are not identical, because they have different values of Rho(w). It is commonly believed (and taught) that Lorentz transformations apply to "any two inertial reference frames moving at relative velocity to one another", but if their vacuum spectral energy density is not identical, then they do not transform according to a Lorentz transformation. A generalized transformation, such as is used in a gravitational potential must be used.

I'm interested in better understanding Woodward's mass change formula, specifically the derivative of power with respect to time that constitutes the required energy change in the accelerating mass. Woodward currently uses a PZT stack and electrical power input. What other phenomenon might constitute the required energy change? Thanks.

I read with interest your paper from last September's Estes Park Workshop. One thing I'm not very clear on is where the almost three hundred terms come from for the MEGA thrust equation? Woodward's mass fluctuation equation is quite simple. What causes the increase in terms? Thanks.

I read with interest your paper from last September's Estes Park Workshop. One thing I'm not very clear on is where the almost three hundred terms come from for the MEGA thrust equation? Woodward's mass fluctuation equation is quite simple. What causes the increase in terms? Thanks.

I want to say, and this is just my speculation, that the increased mass is probably due to a more effective coupling to the vacuum. This is assuming the vacuum is tied to transmitting the momentum to the rest of the universe. Hence, the idea when its heavier you pull it, when its lighter you push it (Woodward effect). You would be pulling your self forwards when pulling the heavier mass, but if the vacuum is coupled then the vacuum gets pulled in the other direction (conservation of momentum). When you uncouple from the vacuum and push it forwards you push less on the vacuum and don't push your self back as much. Rinse repeat.

If you want me to take it further I would say this is probably related to the index of the vacuum. An object moving near c has time slow and appears to become more heavy. If this is a coupling to the vacuum then a negative coupling to the vacuum would appear to give a reduction to the index of the vacuum. Time would speed up and the object becomes lighter.

Again just my speculation. The vacuum would then take up the momentum and carry it to the rest of the universe. Whether that momentum transferred to the vacuum moves faster than light I do not know but if I had to guess it moves at c and maybe could be detected as gravitational waves.

Maybe its similar to black holes spinning around each other. When they move away or towards us their coupling/gamma appears to increase with their radial velocity towards/away from us. When their velocity is perpendicular to us we reside in their present so the time distortion towards us is null (time distortion is in the direction of velocity by relativity). i.e. rapid acceleration towards and away from us. Then again I'm not certain this is the reason, but I suspect it.

i.e. in a gravity well we may be better coupled with the vacuum because of increased virtual particle density? Are gravity weaves fluctuations in virtual particle density? Are virtual particles also the key to the inherent time travel in relativity?

I read with interest your paper from last September's Estes Park Workshop. One thing I'm not very clear on is where the almost three hundred terms come from for the MEGA thrust equation? Woodward's mass fluctuation equation is quite simple. What causes the increase in terms? Thanks.

I want to say, and this is just my speculation, that the increased mass is probably due to a more effective coupling to the vacuum. This is assuming the vacuum is tied to transmitting the momentum to the rest of the universe. Hence, the idea when its heavier you pull it, when its lighter you push it (Woodward effect). You would be pulling your self forwards when pulling the heavier mass, but if the vacuum is coupled then the vacuum gets pulled in the other direction (conservation of momentum). When you uncouple from the vacuum and push it forwards you push less on the vacuum and don't push your self back as much. Rinse repeat.

If you want me to take it further I would say this is probably related to the index of the vacuum. An object moving near c has time slow and appears to become more heavy. If this is a coupling to the vacuum then a negative coupling to the vacuum would appear to give a reduction to the index of the vacuum. Time would speed up and the object becomes lighter.

Again just my speculation. The vacuum would then take up the momentum and carry it to the rest of the universe. Whether that momentum transferred to the vacuum moves faster than light I do not know but if I had to guess it moves at c and maybe could be detected as gravitational waves.

Maybe its similar to black holes spinning around each other. When they move away or towards us their coupling/gamma appears to increase with their radial velocity towards/away from us. When their velocity is perpendicular to us we reside in their present so the time distortion towards us is null (time distortion is in the direction of velocity by relativity). i.e. rapid acceleration towards and away from us. Then again I'm not certain this is the reason, but I suspect it.

i.e. in a gravity well we may be better coupled with the vacuum because of increased virtual particle density? Are gravity weaves fluctuations in virtual particle density? Are virtual particles also the key to the inherent time travel in relativity?

Hope this helps.

Thanks but I suspect it has to do with more mundane aspects of the material properties of the PZT stack and supporting materials.

I'm interested in better understanding Woodward's mass change formula, specifically the derivative of power with respect to time that constitutes the required energy change in the accelerating mass. Woodward currently uses a PZT stack and electrical power input. What other phenomenon might constitute the required energy change? Thanks.

My thinking are such things as fluctuations of kinetic energy and potential energy such as a system with a damped spring. Or sinusoidal fluctuations of the angular acceleration of a rotating mass concurrently undergoing translational accelerations? Things easy to experiment with that might yield big effects. I'm hoping there are much better systems than PZT stacks.

I found this slide but it's not that clear a picture. Even so, the part under energy and momentum is very interesting. It's the clearest and boldest statement I've seen yet on the energy conservation debate.

I found this slide but it's not that clear a picture. Even so, the part under energy and momentum is very interesting. It's the clearest and boldest statement I've seen yet on the energy conservation debate.

Bob:

It was a long time coming, but with the help of Dr. Rodal's NIAC analysis work and Carver Mead's previous observation that any non-rocket thruster with greater than 100% efficient photon rocket performance has to be harvesting energy from an outside source, Dr. Woodward has finally accepted the fact that his Mach-Effect Gravity Assist (MEGA) drives have to develop ALL of their kinetic energy from the cosmological gravity/inertial (G/I) field that gives rise to inertia, but NOT from the local MEGA drive power supply. So the vehicle's local power generators just supply the engine's internal losses required to set up and maintain the MEGA-drive's G/I energy conduit needed to propel the vehicle while in use.

With the foregoing in mind, we can now view the MEGA-drive as a power transistor like device with a given potential G/I energy to kinetic energy GAIN set by its design and operating point of the MEGA-drive engine in question. That is why the equivalent Isp for these G/I field drives can be so astoundingly large. (My STAIF-2006, Mach-Lorentz Thruster (MLT)-2004 had an equivalent Isp of ~1x10^12 seconds when producing ~3.0 milli-Newton with only 18 watts of local 2.2 MHz RF input power.)

I found this slide but it's not that clear a picture. Even so, the part under energy and momentum is very interesting. It's the clearest and boldest statement I've seen yet on the energy conservation debate.

Bob:

It was a long time coming, but with the help of Dr. Rodal's NIAC analysis work and Carver Mead's previous observation that any non-rocket thruster with greater than 100% efficient photon rocket performance has to be harvesting energy from an outside source, Dr. Woodward has finally accepted the fact that his Mach-Effect Gravity Assist (MEGA) drives have to develop ALL of their kinetic energy from the cosmological gravity/inertial (G/I) field that gives rise to inertia, but NOT from the local MEGA drive power supply. So the vehicle's local power generators just supply the engine's internal losses required to set up and maintain the MEGA-drive's G/I energy conduit needed to propel the vehicle while in use.

With the foregoing in mind, we can now view the MEGA-drive as a power transistor like device with a given potential G/I energy to kinetic energy GAIN set by its design and operating point of the MEGA-drive engine in question. That is why the equivalent Isp for these G/I field drives can be so astoundingly large. (My STAIF-2006, Mach-Lorentz Thruster (MLT)-2004 had an equivalent Isp of ~1x10^12 seconds when producing ~3.0 milli-Newton with only 18 watts of local 2.2 MHz RF input power.)

Best, Paul M.

Thanks Paul! That is very interesting indeed. That seems to imply that such a device actually could be used as an energy generator as I have frequently heard from critics of propellentless propulsion. They suggested a rotational device could in principle be used to harvest more energy than is put in to create the conditions to run the device.

It was a long time coming, but with the help of Dr. Rodal's NIAC analysis work and Carver Mead's previous observation that any non-rocket thruster with greater than 100% efficient photon rocket performance has to be harvesting energy from an outside source, Dr. Woodward has finally accepted the fact that his Mach-Effect Gravity Assist (MEGA) drives have to develop ALL of their kinetic energy from the cosmological gravity/inertial (G/I) field that gives rise to inertia, but NOT from the local MEGA drive power supply. So the vehicle's local power generators just supply the engine's internal losses required to set up and maintain the MEGA-drive's G/I energy conduit needed to propel the vehicle while in use.

Yes. Ron Stahl (aka GI-Thruster) says so for years. It is even written in Wikipedia in the Woodward effect page, with a link to one of his articles:

Quote from: Wikipedia

Considering those conservation issues, a Mach effect thruster relies on Mach's principle, hence it is not an electrical to kinetic transducer, i.e. it does not convert electric energy to kinetic energy. Rather, a Mach Effect Thruster is a gravinertial transistor that controls the flow of gravinertial flux, in and out of the active mass of the thruster. The primary power into the thruster is contained in the flux of the gravitational field, not the electricity that powers the device. Failing to account for this flux, is much the same as failing to account for the wind on a sail.** Stahl, Ron (21 February 2015). "Mach-Effect physics conservation concerns: 3 important observations".

With the foregoing in mind, we can now view the MEGA-drive as a power transistor like device with a given potential G/I energy to kinetic energy GAIN set by its design and operating point of the MEGA-drive engine in question. That is why the equivalent Isp for these G/I field drives can be so astoundingly large. (My STAIF-2006, Mach-Lorentz Thruster (MLT)-2004 had an equivalent Isp of ~1x10^12 seconds when producing ~3.0 milli-Newton with only 18 watts of local 2.2 MHz RF input power.)

Best, Paul M.

That's a remarkable level of thrust, Paul, already in the usable range for space applications. Given there are more replications now, I think we need a page with the reported thrust per watt of the different MEGA drive experiments as well, for comparing between them and with other existing experiments, like those of the Emdrive.

This overall field of anomalous thrust has gone from mere speculations and ultimately falsified devices, into actual experiments with recipes that produce consistent positive results. With the MEGA drive at 6-sigma level of confidence, we can say these are exciting times indeed.